Effective parameters for the particle breakage of calcareous sands: An experimental study

Calcareous sediments have different behavior under monotonic and cyclic loadings compared to that of terrigenous soils. Particle breakage is considered the most important feature of calcareous soils and has been used in many experimental investigations recently. This phenomenon affects some characteristics of carbonate sediments such as compressibility, shearing strength and permeability. In this study, experiments were conducted to evaluate the parameters that affect the particle breakage of calcareous sands, including confining pressure, relative density, axial strain, drainage conditions and grain size distribution. The input energy per unit volume of the soil was also calculated to analyze the effect of this parameter on the particle breakage. In the testing program, two calcareous sands from different locations in the Persian Gulf, namely Bushehr Port (BP) and Hormuz Island (HI) sands, were used for the triaxial compression tests. The experimental results showed that the input energy played an important role in the particle breakage behavior of used soils. In comparison to other parameters considered in this study, axial strain as a representation of the effect of deviatoric loading had major influences on the amount of crushing. The results also indicated that HI sand particles yielded at a higher stress than BP sand.